Showing posts with label International Ice Patrol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label International Ice Patrol. Show all posts

Friday, August 20, 2010

Fascination and Danger: Two Ways of Knowing Baffin Bay Icebergs

Ethelind Wright created a wiki to structure her exhibit "Fascination and Danger: Two Ways of Knowing Baffin Bay Icebergs" which focuses on two visions of icebergs: as the object of an artist’s fascination and as a danger to international commerce.

American artist William Bradford, along with Isaac I. Hayes who accompanied him on his 1869 trip to Greenland, tells one story: an imaginative, evocative tale of icebergs as remote, mysterious, and majestic.

The work of the International Ice Patrol, founded in 1913 and still carrying out its mission today, tells a different story: the factual, scientific tale of the danger that this ice poses to fishing and passenger ships, as well as commercial vessels traversing the North Atlantic and carrying goods to and from America.